Gbuy Beta Launch Today?

Posted by Miles Evans

As reported earlier this month in Forbes Google is set to release their Paypal killer GBuy into beta today. Now of course Google has no comment on impending product releases so it remains to be seen if and when GBuy surfaces. In the very recent past its existence was completely denied.

What we know about GBuy:

• Paypal: 1.9 to 2.9 percent (plus $0.30 per transaction).
• GBuy: 1.5-2% commission per transaction. Free during the beta. BUT, the Forbes article says that doesn't include the discount pricing it will provide to AdWords users, who could get the cost dropped to nothing.
• The ability for merchants to become a trusted GBuy merchant. This designation would be apparent in the SERPs and may even become a new ranking variable for ad placement.
• GBuy is said to work in conjunction with Adwords via a buy now mechanism. Not much I can say about this without speculating but this obviously huge.
• GBuy is expected to be available in beta to only US and possibly Canadian merchants.
• Payments will be processed on Google’s domain so GBuy should have a fairly complete and accurate picture of search conversions. This means we can finally get a good ROI picture comparing Adwords vs organic - something we have always lacked without 3rd party scripting.
• The domain gbuy.com has been registered to the Burbank, CA, firm Trout & Zimmer. SEW reported last fall that this firm has been used to hold domains for Google in the past.

Pure rambling speculation on future GBuy features

• How about letting me transfer my Adsense moolah to GBuy or even Adwords. That would be hella cool and seems pretty obvious.
• Debit cards! Paypal debit cards rule (for those lucky enough o have them) and issuing the cards is really trivial. Let’s have it!
• Offsite payment gateway. Why not?
• Global participation. Since I live in a country flagged for high credit card fraud this really is important to me. Google has a solid history for global business strategies so let’s hope they continue the trend. Knowing about a dozen full time online profiteers in Thailand I can easily say we are frothing at the mouth for a Paypal alternative.

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Posted Jun 29, 2006 at 01:39 AM | Permalink | Trackback URL | Del.icio.us | DIGG!